


Protector of Justice, See?

by ChipAndDealer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Nymphadora Tonks, Cause she uses cockney slang, Could Be Canon, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Maybe Dumbledore comes in at the end and obliviates everyone, One Shot, Pre-Hogwarts, Tonks has an accent, Young Harry, Young Tonks, i dunno, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 22:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20454410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: “People don’t usually stand up to Dudley, especially older kids,” Harry said, trying to ignore the pain in his leg to mixed success. “Usually they just don’t care.”“Who you calling a kid?” The pink-haired girl asked, voice a little heated. “‘Sides, I’m gonna be an auror when I grow up. Protector of justice, see? Can’t let something like that slide by when I can do something about it.” She grunted as she began carrying him up a steep hill.





	Protector of Justice, See?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, it's your local Tonks dealer, here. It's always incredible to me how underutilized Tonks is in fanfiction: she is cousins with Draco Malfoy, the niece of Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, first cousin, once removed, to Sirius Black, an auror which gives her a relationship with Mad Eye Moody and Amelia Bones, and she's a freaking shapeshifter to boot? I don't have a problem with her neglect in canon, because I've come to expect it by now, but it does bug me how hard it is to find a fic where she isn't reduced to mooning over Harry without exploring her character/background at all.
> 
> So, that's why I decided to write this fic, I guess. Hope you enjoy.

She was a blur, a pale pink-haired whirlwind that sent Dudley toppling to the floor like a sack of flour with a single well placed punch. The sun hung overhead, beating down on the situation like it was a referee presiding over the match. Some kids gathered to watch, the playground equipment abandoned for the moment as new entertainment provided itself. Harry Potter sat leaning against the bottommost bar of the jungle gym, cradling his broken leg and looking up at the snarling face of his savior.

She wasn’t as wide as Dudley was, but a good deal taller, and his collapse into the dirt only heightened the effect as she jabbed a finger in his direction. “You’re lucky you’re a muggle, or I’d hex you so hard Saint Mungo’s would name a ward after you.”

Dudley got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. “What are you defending him for? He’s a freak.”

Another fist sent Dudley to the wood-chipped ground. “I don’t care if he’s You-Know-Who, himself. You can’t fight one’s got no fight left.”

“Piers-“ he called before the girl sent a kick right into his overdeveloped stomach, silencing him with a grunt.

“I don’t need to tackle more of your friends, muggle. Fighting nine year olds don’t do swell for my image.” Saying that, she bent over and picked Harry up, slinging him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Next time I see you, you’d better be a model citizen, you hear?”

She walked away without another word to the downed Dursley.

After moving down the street a ways, Harry whispered a quiet, “thank you.”

The girl adjusted her grip on him to be more comfortable and kept carrying him. “‘S no problem. Hate bullies, ‘s all.” Her accent was thick, Cockney or London, he guessed. Definitely not from around there.

“People don’t usually stand up to Dudley, especially older kids,” he said, trying to ignore the pain in his leg to mixed success. “Usually they just don’t care.”

“Who you calling a kid?” She asked, voice a little heated. “‘Sides, I’m gonna be an auror when I grow up. Protector of justice, see? Can’t let something like that slide by when I can do something about it.” She grunted as she began carrying him up a steep hill. “Thought I saw a hospital this a ways,” she grumbled to herself.

Harry’s eyebrows knitted together. “Auror, is that like a policeman?”

“Sure is,” she corroborated. “Lotta bad folks out there. Need someone to clean ‘em up, yeah?”

Harry shrugged. “I never really thought about it.”

“Well, take that kid back there,” she began, her breath beginning to labor as she adjusted his position once again. “You’re smaller’n him, different-like. You know him?” Harry nodded. “I bet you can do all kinds of stuff he can’t, right?”

Harry considered for a few moments. Cooking, cleaning, running, Harry could fit in tighter spaces than Dudley could, and he almost always got better grades. He could also help Misses Figg with her cats, and he knew Dudley was terrible with animals. “Yeah, I guess.”

She grinned, ruffling his hair for a moment as she adjusted her grip once again. “There you go, and I bet he knows it, too. But just because he’s bigger, he thinks he can push you around, call you names, but he can’t.”

Harry pursed his lips, skeptical. “Nothing’s ever stopped him before. He’s got loads of friends, and my aunt and uncle think he’s great.”

She shrugged, shifting him onto her back to better carry him. “Well, that’s the thing with crummy people. There are so many people, it’s awful easy for them to find more, just as crummy as them. But that’s why we need auror’s, right? If all the decent folks give up, then the crummy one’s get to run everything.”

Harry sagged, starting to cry from the incessant pounding pain in his legs. “But I can’t fight Dudley, and even when I run, Piers Polkiss and the others track me down, and I have to get home eventually, and I can’t avoid him then, not when there’s cleaning to be done and meals to be cooked.”

He began hyperventilating and she snapped back at him. “Whoah, calm down, kid, before you wear yourself out. Go back, who’s Dudley?”

He wiped his eyes, calming down as she said. “He’s my cousin, the one you knocked over.”

She nodded. “Cleaned his clock, more like, but your cousin, that’s why your aunt and uncle can’t get enough of ‘im, right? But, why can’t you avoid him at your house?”

“My aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, I live with them and Dudley,” Harry said, quietly.

“Why? Your parents out of town or something?” She tactlessly asked.

“They’re dead,” he answered, sullenly.

She stopped for a moment. “Yikes, kid, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She kept walking. “My aunts and uncles are crummy, but at least my folks are alright.”

Harry perked up at this. “Your aunts and uncles are crummy?”

She smiled, grimly. “Yeah, pretty much my whole family tree’s rotten all the way through, ‘cept me mum and dad.” She shifted him to her right shoulder and rolled down her left sleeve to reveal a deep but faded scar, where the word, ‘mudblood,’ was carved in jagged letters. “Aunt took me when I was about your age. Did this. Coulda killed me, but the auror’s found me before she did.”

“What’s mudblood mean?” Harry asked, resisting the urge to reach out and touch the ugly scar.

She rolled her sleeve back down, roughly, walking faster. “It’s not a very nice word,” she said, simply, growing quiet after that.

“My aunt and uncle lock me in a broom cupboard,” Harry whispered. He’d never told anyone that before, but he felt her story about her aunt wasn’t one she told often, either, and it was only fair.

Her grip on him tightened. “What.”

“They take me out to cook, or clean, or work outside in the garden, but when they don’t want to see me, or after I did something ‘freakish’ they lock me in there,” telling someone felt like releasing a terrible weight dragging him down, and he could feel some energy radiating off his savior as the final words slipped from his mouth like an incantation for a spell, “I sleep in a broom cupboard under the stairs.”

She was silent for a minute, and the only sounds were her shoes on the pavement and her breaths as she walked. When she finally spoke again, her voice was icy, frozen with anger she didn’t even show fighting Dudley. “Let’s get you to hospital. I need to take care of something once you’re fixed up.”

Harry gave a start as he looked at her again. In the light of the setting sun, her hair didn’t look pink, but a burning, furious red, like captured fire.

But hair color didn’t just change like that. It was the lighting, Harry thought to himself. Still, he was silent after that, and once more the only sounds were her footsteps echoing along the empty road.

They got to the hospital, and the girl nearly collapsed when Harry was finally taken off her shoulders and she was allowed to sit down with some water. She waved encouragingly to Harry as the doctor set the bone and wrapped it in a cast. While the pain of setting the bone was enormous, after it was wrapped, it did feel a bit better and the doctor gave him some medication that brought the pain down to a dull throb.

Once they had started treating him, a nurse brought the girl aside and started asking her questions. Harry couldn’t hear what they were, but by the scowl on the girl’s face, he guessed they weren’t good. Afterwards, they were both shuffled into a side room to await ‘someone you need to talk to,’ as the doctor put it.

The girl put her feet on the table in the center of the room and leaned back, her hair definitely pink once again in that light. “How’s the leg?” She asked, motioning to the cast.

Harry grinned, tapping it gently. “Loads better. Can hardly feel it.”

She nodded, staring forward again.

Harry bit his lip. “Are you mad at me?”

The girl started. “What? No. Why would I be mad at you?”

“You’ve been mad ever since I told you about the broom cupboard,” he said, frowning. “I know I shouldn’t tell secrets, but you told yours and I thought-“

She grabbed his hands before he could start crying again. “Hey, hey. The thing with my aunt ain’t a secret, and your cupboard thing shouldn’t be either. I’m glad you told me, and I am mad, just not at you.” She sighed, slumping back into the chair. “This whole thing is a mess.” She covered her eyes with her arm, leaning back over the end of the chair. “Wish I could owl my mum.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but he appreciated the sentiment, nonetheless.

After a few minutes, another woman came in with grey hairs done up in a bun behind her head. She shook both of their hands, introducing herself. “I’m Marcie Graham, it’s nice to meet you both.” After taking a seat and adjusting her glasses, she leveled a look at the pink haired girl. “I understand you two just met today?”

The girl shrugged. “Found him getting beat up on a playground. Leg was broken, so I carried him here. Kid needed help, didn’t need to know him.”

Harry nodded, corroborating the story and Marcie nodded with a smile. “Well, thank you for that. If there were more people like you out there, it would make my job significantly easier.”

The girl looked away, a faint redness tinging her cheeks. “‘S nothing.”

Marcie turned to Harry, smile fading a bit. “So you live with your aunt and uncle, correct?” Harry nodded. “Tell me about them.”

He looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. “My parents died.” It was strange. He’d always known that, but to actually say it, first with the pink haired girl, and again so soon after, it rang with an unexpected finality. “My aunt and uncle don’t give me as much as my cousin, and they make me do more, but...” he shrugged, helplessly, “they’re all I have.” Besides, who else would take in a freak like him?

“It might seem easy, staying with something you know, even if it’s a bad situation,” Marcie said, comfortingly. “But you have to think about your own happiness, and you have to realize that, however it seems, and whatever they tell you, you’re not alone.”

The pink haired girl’s hand laid gently on his shoulder, and he flinched. “Listen, kid. I’m not gonna pretend to know you, but I’ll tell you right now I’d rather kidnap you than let you go back to your aunt and uncle.”

“To make us feel without options, alone, unwanted,” Marcie continued, “it is our tormentors’ greatest skill.”

Harry looked at the girl’s face, tracing the lines and ridges masked with righteous anger, not at him, but for him, and nodded, slowly, but with certainty. “I don’t want to go back,” he decided.

Marcie nodded with an encouraging smile and the girl outright grinned. “Tell us about your aunt and uncle,” Marcie said next, and after taking a deep breath, Harry did.

It was difficult, and there were a few times he thought he saw the girl’s hair change color again as she tromped around the room in indignant rage, but her and Marcie were both listening. For the first time in his life he had people actually listening when he talked.

When it was over, after he’d told every bad deed he could remember the Dursley’s committing, Marcie thanked him, and thanked the girl, leaving the room with the assurance she’d, ‘be back shortly.’

Once Marcie left, the girl came over and patted him on the shoulder. “You did a good thing, today, kid. I don’t know where you’re going next, but anywhere’s gotta be better ‘n that.” She looked out the window, swearing when she saw the darkness outside. “Is it that late? I need to get back to my folks.”

Harry grabbed her hand, looking up at her with pleading eyes. “All you’ve done for me, and now you’re just gonna leave. Could you at least tell me your address, so I can write to you?”

She ruffled his hair again, smiling. “Sure, kid.” Walking over to the table in the center of the room, she picked up the pen Marcie was using to write on her clipboard and returned, quickly marking down an address on the back of Harry’s hand. “My house is kinda out of the way, so we don’t get muggle mail, but that’s my granddad’s place. He doesn’t understand me much, but he’s alright. Might take a bit for me to write back, though. I go away for school ‘cept for Summer. Either way, don’t worry; he’ll get it to me, sure as eggs is eggs.”

Harry clutched the hand close to his chest. “Thank you,” he whispered.

She ruffled his hair one last time before opening the window and starting to climb out of it.

A thought struck Harry as he called out to her, “wait, I never got your name.”

Two catlike eyes stared at him from the dark. “Tonks. Call me Tonks,” she said.

“Harry Potter,” he introduced himself, and she laughed.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” She asked, rhetorically, and disappeared into the night, with only an echoing call behind her. “Wotcher, Harry Potter. By the time you get to Hogwarts, I’ll be Auror Tonks, yeah?” With a last, almost cackling laugh, the future Auror Tonks ran into the dark streets of Little Whinging and for once in his life, Harry was left alone, but not lonely.


End file.
